The Kurdish Question, Urban Protests, and the Neoliberal Transformation of the Turkish State and Society

Abstract

Since the summer of 2013, Turkey has been known for turmoil on her streets, political scandals, and a chain of political crises that continue to erode the legitimacy of the existing government and rattle the foundations of the political and judicial order. Street protests have certainly been inspired by both the anticapitalist revolts in the West and the “Arab Spring,” while being the effect of a series of domestic causes, including, among others, the rising urban/ecological and secular concerns vis-a-vis the government’s policies, the arrogant demonization of the youth and secular middle classes in the PM’s discourse that accompanies sustained police violence, and the popular opposition to the Turkish state’s de facto involvement in the Syrian civil war. However, analyses that exclusively emphasize these manifest dynamics would risk neglecting the significance of two latent elements that furnished the grounds of these protests: the liquidation of the conventional republican elites (“the regime of tutelage”) through political trials since 2008, and the subsequent launch of negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdish movement. This chapter will pose the question of the place of the Kurdish peace process, in particular, and the Kurdish question, in general, among the structures and dynamics that constitute the background of the ongoing unrest on all the streets of Turkey.